Wednesday, May 22, 2019

Bad Animals — Tom Cull (Insomniac Press)

Every single poem Tom Cull writes is a different type of gold. Bad Animals had Today's book of poetry going in poetry circles. This cat can burn.

Today's book of poetry is going to start today's festivities with one of the finer list poems we've encountered in a long while. It seems Cull can whip these wild musings into movies that attack the inner cortex of your brain from all sides with skill approaching magic.

Preparing for Apocalypse: 13 Survival Tips

1. No one will survive the apocalypse.

2. In addition to anything starring Will Smith, consult the

following movies: Deep Impact, Melancholia, Armageddon,

Waterworld, WALL-E, 28 Days Later, and Eat

Pray Love.

3. Add the following titles to your self-help library: anything

by Anne Coulter, Blood Meridian, Roughing It in the Bush, Not

Wanted on the Voyage, and Les Revenentes.

4. Replace GPS with GSP.

5. Audition for the following reality television shows:

Survivor, The Biggest Loser, Hell's Kitchen, Naked and Afraid,

Polyamory, Married & Dating, Real World, Deadliest Catch,

Full House.

6. Compress your vocabulary—remove words such as

ambivalent, ecopoetics, neo-liberal, and crepe.

i(a). idiom. Literalize your metaphors (open a can of worms,

eat slow food, put a ring on it, issue trigger warnings, make a

killing, beg to differ, cross that bridge, etc.).

i(b). diction. Prepare for shifts in word definitions: glacial,

for example, will mean "very fast." Koodo, Google, Hulu, and

Snapchat will become onomatopoeia.

7. Know when to follow; know when to retweet.

8. Trade in Apple, BlackBerry, Tinder, and Kindle for apple,

blackberry, tinder, and kindle.

9. Loot anthropology museums for supplies. (Didactic panels

may also prove helpful.)

10. Refrain from correcting improper usage of personal

pronouns I and me.

11. Stay limber; work on your cardio. When shit gets real,

remember tip #1 and/or Will Smith in Bad Boys II.

12. Get comfortable with killing. Start small—a worm, maybe a

mayfly—then move up to vertebrates. Don't always choose ugly

things. You will get the hang of it.

13. Make a list dividing the people you know into columns A and

B. When the time comes, you'll know what it's for.

💫💫💫

Tom Cull is a new age poetry Tom Robbins, Kurt Vonnegut, long winded but smarter Richard Brautigan and that crazy old insurance company's wild life documentary narrator. All in one, and more. What Today's book of poetry is so clumsily trying to say is that Mr. Cull hits every poetry nerve receptor we have and calls out a few we didn't know we had.

It's as simple as this — Tom Cull's poems explode off of the page propelled by intelligent wit and a fantastically agile and humane closet of frailties.

Mr. Cull, who is apparently also an ornithologist/zoologist of the highest order, is also unhinged in the best possible way. Tom Cull is not wired like the rest of us. As a result he is perfectly placed to objectively cut through our human nonsense, all our bullshit.

Show and Tell

Dead man in a box

inside a larger box.

With us.

Moving down a mile-long line

of pylons on the 401,

a hawk folds and dives behind

a row of cedars.

A stack of sandwiches,

devilled eggs,

tarts, and coffee.

"I'm a man of few words."

The dead man replied, "Yes but you use them

all the time."

The season is fall.

He leaves. For days

he leaves. Moaning and terrified.

The hospice nurse asked, "Have you

been able to return to

any of your normal activities—

light housework, cooking,

laundry?" His reply: "I have a wife."

The child in the spotted dress

hides behind the coffin, and the bruises

fade yellow.

💫💫💫

Those of you Today's book of poetry fans with long memories will remember that Today's book of poetry wrote about Tom Cull's beautiful Baseline Press chapbook What the Badger Said back in June of 2014. You can see that here:

Today's book of poetry had nothing but admiration for Mr. Cull's Badger. Bad Animals is a step into the big league and Cull has made it a head-turning giant step.

Our morning read was held out on the porch for the first time this year, all bright sunshine and promise. Today's book of poetry asked the crew to dedicate today's reading to Toronto playwright and most excellent man, Andrew Batten (1963-2019). Andy loved poetry.

The Today's book of poetry staff responded with gusto. Our morning read of Tom Cull's Bad Animals was the best we've had around here since we blasted through David Lee's last book.

Today we're going to finish the proceedings with another smashing "list" poem. Thank you Tom Cull.

Invasive Species

European green crab

Purple loosestrife

Zebra mussel

Sea lamprey

Emerald ash borer

Didymo

Gypsy moth

Sub-Saharan Zeus moss

Asian long-horned beetle

Phragmites

Karaoke

Giant hogweed

Asiatic carpe diem

Common buckthorn

Northern snakehead

Killer shrimp

Rusty crayfish

Brown spruce longhorn beetle

Mountain pine beetle

Sirex woodwasp

Dutch oven

Butternut canker

Common crested Brohammer

Japanese knotweed

Garlic mustard

Dog-strangling vine

Alfalfa blotch leafminer

Stuffed crust pizza

Prussian drone operator

Eurasian witch lemming

Holy Roman trebuchet

Oriental weather loach

Asian swamp eel

African clawed frog

Spanish slug

European yellow-tailed scorpion

Red-card slider

Water hyacinth

Gangis Kanye

Jayden

Eurasian wild boar

Burmese python

Tyrannosaurus rex

Giant African land snail

Three-sceptred monarch

Herb-crusted salmon

Panko-crusted tilapia

Open-concept kitchen

Spotted eastern gulch

Barrel-chested man-child

Three steepled tree weevil

Right said Fred

💫💫💫

Bad Animals is some of the best damned cooking Today's book of poetry has tasted, flat out. Today's book of poetry loved these poems and assures you that given the chance you will love them too.

They are that good.

Tom Cull

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tom Cull grew up in Huron County and now resides in London, Ontario, where he teaches writing and serves as the city's current Poet Laureate. His chapbook, What the Badger Said, was published in 2013. Since 2012, Tom has been the director of Thames River Rally, a grass roots environmental group he co-founded with his partner Miriam Love, and their son Emmett.

BLURBS

"Like his black bears that have drifted too far south, Tom Cull's poems wander through a suburban wilderness, out of place, unpredictable, full of purpose, nosing among the wasting, surreal artifacts of human life, looking for sustenance."

—Jeffery Donaldson, author of Missing Link

"Bad Animals sings a natural world rendered absurd by human hands. In the same line, the same breath, the reader can find grief and calm, folly and beauty, spectacle and longing, yet Tom Cull's poems always circle back to joy."

—Laurie Graham, author of Settler Education

Tom Cull (8th Poet) | Open Mic Poetry May 3, 2017

Video: London Open Mic Poetry

insomniacpress.com

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